


Five Fevers

by ariadnes_string



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fever, Hurt/Comfort, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-13 20:40:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3395618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Thomas Shelby's life was marked by illness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Fevers

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through the end of S2.  
> Warnings: depiction of canonical deaths; discussion of the horrors of war.
> 
> Note: It's Romani custom to burn the belongings of the deceased.  
> Note: If you’ve watched the show, you know that the Shelby timelines are…a bit hard to figure out. I’m drawing here on d_generate_girl/voodoochild's convincing theory that Arthur, Tommy, Ada and John had a different mother than Finn.
> 
> Thank you also to d_generate_girl for the extremely helpful beta! All remaining mistakes are my own.

**One**

Five days after John was born, Polly brought the children in to see their mother.

Ada hid behind Tommy’s shoulder, Arthur balled his fists and stared at the floor, but Tommy forced himself to look.

At first, all he could think was how _flat_ she looked, her body barely raising the covers above the bed. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been full of their new brother, every part of her rounded and soft, her face tired, but flushed. Now she was white as milk, except for the scarlet patches on her cheeks like a rash. Her eyes swept over them, and then wandered away, restless.

“Tell your mother you forgive her,” said Polly.

It was so wrong that true fear stabbed Tommy’s belly. Children didn’t forgive parents; parents forgave children, for breaking plates, or laughing in church, or pulling their sister’s hair.

“Go on, now,” said Polly.

Ada whimpered and started to sniff. Arthur opened his mouth and got stuck on the first syllable, “Ma-ma-ma—.” “We forgive you, Mama,” Tommy said, and hated how like a little boy he sounded. “We all do.”

On the bed, their mother’s lips moved, and her fingers plucked at the covers. Tommy couldn’t tell if she’d heard them or not. Even though he was scared, he wanted to get closer, to touch her, to see if there was anything left of her scent under the dense sickroom smell, but Polly shooed them out and closed the door.

In the hall, he could hear the baby crying, then a woman’s voice hushing him. The women had arrived as soon as the baby started coming. Tommy didn’t know their names, but he remembered their faces from other births and christenings. They wore black, jangled with silver jewelry, and smelled of unfamiliar spices. When their mother didn’t rise from the birthing bed, more women came. Tommy saw one unbutton her shirt and take the baby to her breast, before she gave him a smack for watching. Their father was nowhere to be found.

The women, even Polly, were focused on their mother and the baby, with no time for the other children, except to give them the occasional cuff for making too much noise. They’d been living off bread and jam and milk, avoiding the pot of strange-smelling stew always bubbling on the stove. Now, Tommy herded them into the kitchen, cut slices, and spread them thinly with what he could scrape out of the bottom of the jar. They ate silently, eyes on their plates. They were running short of everything. Tomorrow he’d have to venture out for supplies.

They had two beds between them—one for the boys, one for Ada—but since the baby came, they’d all been piling in together, seeking comfort in the closeness. That night, Tommy waited ‘til the others’ breathing had evened out—Ada still sniffling a bit in her sleep—then made his way back to their mother’s room.

Things had changed since the afternoon. The door was ajar, for one, and when Tommy nudged it open, he saw Polly sitting in a straight-backed chair next to the bed. Lit candles glowed on every surface, a few even on the floor, and a heavy scarf hung over the vanity’s mirror. On the bed, when he could bring himself to look at it, his mother lay, looking even paler and less substantial than before. The patches of color were gone from her cheeks, and her hair lay smooth across the pillow, as if it had just been brushed. Her eyes were closed.

When Polly saw him, her face crumpled, but she held out her hand to him and he went to her. He was too big now to crawl onto her lap as he once would have done, but he leaned against her, glad of her warmth, and of the weight of her arm ‘round his shoulders. He pushed his face against her neck and tried to release the sobs that were choking him without making any noise.

“Eh, now,” said Polly, and her voice was thick, but somehow certain, too. “We’ll keep her company, then, you and me. We won’t let her wait alone. And we’ll make sure her way is lighted. She won’t get lost.”

What Tommy would remember of that night was the silence. He knew the women must be busy elsewhere in the house, caring for the baby, preparing for the funeral, but he couldn’t hear them. He couldn’t even hear his own breathing, or Polly’s. He was as deaf as the dead. After a while, he lifted his head, and sat himself at the foot of Polly’s chair. He schooled his face to be as still as hers, and together they watched the candles’ steady flames.

When the sky at last began to lighten, Polly stood and went to the vanity. She pulled out the worked tin box in which his mother kept her few treasures, and took something from it.

“We’ll be burning her things soon,” she said, her voice as startling as a thunderclap after the quiet. “But she’d want you to have something to remember her by.” She held out a small, silver comb. It was a bit tarnished, but etched with delicate floral designs. His mother had worn it to weddings and other celebrations, bright against her dark hair.

Later, as he watched the smoke rise from the pyre of her clothes and bedding, Tommy held the comb tight, feeling its teeth bite into his palm. He didn’t cry. 

**Two**

When it wasn’t about cudgeling and cajoling men over the top to near-certain death, being a Sergeant Major turned out to be mostly about numbers: finding the necessary twenty new pairs of boots; calculating the number of men they’d need to replace the ones they’ve lost. Once word got out about just how fucking good Sergeant Shelby was with numbers—how he could make supplies appear out of nowhere; make impossible sums solve themselves—he ended up doing the books for half the companies in the battalion.

Tommy didn’t mind. It was useful to be owed so many favors. Tonight, for instance, he had a stack of paperwork in front of him, but he was warm, for once, and dry, ensconced in a private room his captain had commandeered for him at company headquarters, far behind the lines. He had a smoke between his fingers and a bottle of whiskey at his elbow. Not bad, for the winter of 1916. 

It didn’t last.

The door creaked, and a familiar voice said, “Tommy?”

A thousand fears swept through him—of unexploded shells, and snipers, and broken legs, not to mention the things that could have happened at home—but he forced himself not to look up and to sound only annoyed when he said, “Not now, John. I’m busy.”

“It’s Arthur,” John began, and somehow Tommy could tell from his tone that Arthur wasn’t dead, but only up to some typical Arthur brand of foolishness. He looked up.

“What’s he done now?”

John hesitated. “Well…he’s at the pub,” It wasn’t a pub—just the local place where soldiers drank and picked up whores—but close enough. “And I don’t know what set him off, but he’s shouting and breaking glasses. There’ll be a fight soon, or someone’ll call the MPs.”

“Drunk,” said Tommy, any sympathy he might’ve had evaporating.

“No. Or not only drunk. I think he’s sick, Tommy.”

Tommy raised his eyebrows. “Sick in the head, more like.”

“Aw, c’mon, don’t be like that. He’ll get clobbered, or nicked, or…”

Tommy thought a good walloping wouldn’t do Arthur any harm, nor would drying out in a police cell. But John looked so miserably young and worried under his khaki cap that he followed him out into the snowy night.

All that’d happened to Arthur by the time they got there was that he’d been thrown out of the bar onto the street. He was still shouting, though incoherently now, and balling up the meagre snow and hurling it at the lit windows. That—and he’d shed both tunic and shirt and was stalking about half-naked in the frigid air.

“See?” said John.

“Bloody hell,” said Tommy.

He took off his own great coat and approached Arthur as he would a spooked horse. “Easy now, brother. Time to come in out of the cold.” But Arthur wasn’t listening; he didn’t even turn around. So in the end Tommy rushed him, wrapping him up in the coat and knocking him to the ground in one go. Arthur, madman that he was, fought, arms and legs flailing wildly. Tommy might not have been able to hold him if John hadn’t pitched in.

“Told you,” John said, once they had Arthur trapped between them, cocooned in Tommy’s coat and breathing hard. “Told you he was in a raging fever.”

 _War is a fever_ , Tommy thought, watching the snowflakes melt on Arthur’s burning face. What else but delirium could explain what they were doing in this rancid armpit of a town, so far from everything they loved? Killing, he understood, for revenge, or to make a point. But this wholesale slaughter? That he understood less and less every day.

“What’s all this, then?” It was the military police, arriving belatedly on the scene. 

Tommy stood, hauling Arthur up with him, ready to bargain and negotiate. But the senior man turned out to be someone for whom he’d procured a black market case of whiskey only the week before. It was a simple matter to convince the MPs to deliver Arthur to the hospital tent, rather than the holding cells.

“Shelbys forever,” Arthur bellowed as they led him away, his comprehension of his surroundings clearly very dim. 

“Shelbys forever,” Tommy echoed softly, watching him go.

The doctor diagnosed Arthur with trench fever. Two days later, John went down with it, too. They both spent a week in the field hospital, and ten additional days in a convalescent hospital in Dorset. It was the best few weeks of Tommy’s war. _Safe,_ he said to himself every night before he slept. _They’re safe_.

**Three**

If war was a fever, so was love. 

Or at least that’s what Tommy told himself when he woke three days after Grace shot Campbell drenched in sweat and sick as a dog. Actually, his first thought was that the wound from Billy Kimber’s bullet was going bad. But when he peeled back the bandaging, the flesh around the bullet hole was pink and clean. 

_Love, then_ , he decided, heaving the contents of his stomach into the bedside bin.

Desperate for something to soothe his stomach and his mind, he fumbled in the bedside table for his pipe. But in the hurry of the past few weeks, he’d neglected to replenish his supplies. 

He lay back and contemplated venturing out to find more. It seemed an overwhelming prospect, when the bed felt like it was pitching beneath him like an unbroken horse. Still, he’d undertaken more difficult things. Perhaps if he rested for a bit.

It seemed like mere moments before Polly found him like that, though it might’ve been hours.

Her first thought, too, was the bullet wound. But when she sat on the edge of the bed and began to undo the bandages, he stayed her hand. 

“Grace,” he croaked, meaning, _this is the price of losing her_.

But Polly’s eyes fell on the pipe and other paraphernalia strewn across the floor, and she snorted. “I expect there’s more than one poison leaving your system at the moment, Thomas.”

She might’ve had a few more choice words on the subject—indeed, Tommy was sure she did—but another spasm of nausea seized him, and they were lost in the sounds of his own retching.

Polly kept up a stream of chastisement as she changed the sheets and sponged him down like a child, but it was so soft and familiar it was almost comforting.

“I’ll make your excuses to the boys,” she said. “And bring you a fresh bucket.”

Alone, Tommy shivered and imagined Grace’s fingers tracing up his back, her hair brushing across his face. He burned, and imagined the heat of her body. He heard her voice in his ear so clearly he started from the bed a dozen times. But when he saw her in his dreams, her back was always towards him, and she was walking away.

“You’re almost there,” said Polly, spoon-feeding him broth because his hands were shaking too hard to hold a spoon. “Another day or so and you’ll be good as new.”

He didn’t believe her. New was something he would never be again. 

But Polly was right. Not long after, Tommy woke feeling as clean and hollow as a copper kettle. Hit me now, he thought, and I’ll peal like a bell. If he’d been a praying man, he would’ve blessed the fever, for scouring away the mistakes of the past. 

He had some good ideas about taking over the London markets

 **Four** : 

By the time they got Freddie to hospital, everyone knew. Everyone except Ada. 

When Tommy arrived, Peaky Blinders already lined the walls of the corridor, caps in hand. It was four in the morning. Esme held baby Karl, while Polly hovered at Ada’s shoulder. Ada herself was having a whispered argument with the doctor. “Peritonitis,” Tommy heard. “Sepsis.”

“Tommy. Thank God,” Polly said when she saw him. “He’s been asking for you.”

That drew Ada’s attention. “No,” she hissed, turning. Her face was drawn and the whites showed around her pupils. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying. You stay away from him.”

“Let him, Ada,” Polly said, her hand gentle on Ada’s shoulder. _Before it’s too late_ hung unsaid between them.

Ada glared, then tightened her lips and turned back to the doctor. Tacit permission granted.

In the bare room, a single lamp fought back the dark. Freddie lay beneath a thin sheet, his face red and twisted up with pain. Tommy thought him unconscious at first, but when Polly clicked the door shut behind them, he turned his head.

“Tommy,” he said, voice ravaged, almost unrecognizable. “You came for me. I knew you would. Knew you wouldn’t forget your promise.” The words were weary soldiers, stumbling and slow.

Tommy went to him. “Course I did, Freddie. Course I did. I remember.” Freddie’s hand was hot and dry in his, though beads of sweat stood out on his face.

“Do it now, Tommy. I can’t stand much more. The sun’ll be out soon. They’ll be shooting again. Do it now, while it’s dark. I won’t mind, while it’s dark.” His words tripped and slipped over each other now. His grip tightened like a vise.

“Soon,” Tommy said. “Soon.” It was all he could think of to say. He looked imploringly at Polly, but she only shook her head and pulled in a harsh breath. 

They were saved by the entrance of one of the sisters, who shooed Tommy away. She spoke to Freddie in firm, professional tones as she ministered to him. “That’s good. Just a sip now. One more.”

When Tommy wrenched his gaze away from the bed, he saw Ada in the doorway. 

“What’s he want from you, Tommy? What’s he asking?” she demanded, her eyes still wild.

“Nothing.” Tommy cleared his throat. Once. Twice. “He’s raving, Ada. That’s all. Thinks he’s in France. Caught outside the wire.”

Ada looked at her husband, then back at Tommy. Then all at once she was in his arms. “That war, that bloody war. Will it never be over?” Her hands beat feebly at his back and shoulders, as if to punish him for both the present and the past. 

Behind them, Freddie made a strangled, unbearable sound, and the nurse clucked.

Tommy pulled Ada’s arms away from him, but held her close, their foreheads touching. “Sssshhh,” he murmured. “Ssshhh.”

He didn’t say that if he’d had his service revolver with him, he might’ve done as Freddie asked, fulfilled the promise they’d made so long ago, in such a different place. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before, after all.

**Five:**

It was three days after Epsom before Tommy made his way to May’s door.

“Told you I’d find you, didn’t I?” he said when she opened it. He tried to smile, but he knew it was a shabby effort.

He got no smile in return. May tightened her jaw and crossed her arms. “You have some nerve, coming here. After that disappearing act. No word, no note. Leaving me hanging with the rest of your women.” She didn’t shout, but the last words were as near a hiss as her well-bred voice would allow.

“Aw, May. It wasn’t like that. It was just business. I had things that needed attending to.” He’d truly thought she’d understood. More fool he.

“Things that needed attending to?” She’d lowered her chin now, like a fighter. “Do you think I can’t put two and two together? Do you think I don’t know you were using your horse—the horse I trained—as a bloody _distraction_ for your bloody _business_? I can put up with a good deal, but to use a good horse that way?” She pressed her lips together, unwilling to go on.

Tommy readied himself for one more try. He wanted her so badly. He wanted to warm his hands over her fury, like an open hearth. But when he opened his mouth, all that emerged was a ragged cough. He had to turn away from May until he could get his breathing under control. When he turned back, her anger had changed to something more watchful.

“You look dreadful,” she said.

“Well, I’ve recently climbed out of my own grave, haven’t I?” 

May frowned. She probably thought it was some tinker saying she didn’t understand. How could she know it was the literal truth? “Well, I suppose something like that deserves a drink,” she said, still betraying nothing. “Since you’re here.”

She poured him a whiskey, and it burned going down, but didn’t stop his trembling.

“Cold?” May asked, a little furrow between her brows.

“It’s the cemetery damp,” Tommy said, and wished he could stop talking about it. He was only going to upset May again, and he didn’t want that.

And indeed, something in his voice seem to provoke her—not to anger, but to kindness. She took the glass out of his hand and laid her slim fingers along his cheek. “Christ, Tommy, you’re burning up.”

He was, he realized as soon as she said it; he could feel the fever beating against his skull, trying to crack his bones. How weak, how stupid, to have come here, expecting her to take him in. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll go.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t get back on the road like this. Let’s get you to bed.”

He thought she’d exile him to the guest wing, send the maid or housekeeper in to tend to him. It was all he deserved. But he’d forgotten how good she was with dumb animals. She took him to her own room, fed him aspirin and another whiskey—hot this time, with lemon—undressed him, and pulled down the covers.

“Thank you,” he said, sliding gratefully between the sheets. They smelled of her expensive French perfume, and, very faintly, of horses.

And finally, May granted him a smile, albeit a small one, that lifted only the corners of her mouth. “Rest.” She picked his trousers off the floor where he’d let them fall, and folded them over a chair. Something shiny dropped out the pocket and May bent to pick it up. His mother’s silver comb: he’d brought it to Epsom for luck, and then forgotten to put it away.

May studied it for a moment before returning it to the pocket, clearly wondering if it belonged to his other woman, or was intended for her. _No,_ Tommy wanted to tell her; _It’s mine. It’s all I have left_. He wanted to reach out his hand for it, to feel its tines against his skin, but the pull of sleep was too strong.

Sometime later, he woke to find her climbing into bed beside him. 

“Don’t,” he muttered as she curled herself around him. “You’ll get sick, too.”

“Not me. Strong as an ox, I am.”

That makes two of us, Tommy said, or perhaps only thought, and fell asleep again.

Later still, he dreamt of being buried. It was the same dream he’d had since the war, but rejiggered courtesy of Chester fucking Campbell. Not a tunnel in France collapsing around him this time, but clods of earth being piled over him in a bare English field, gradually blocking out the pale, bright, sky. The dirt was cold and wet and heavy, and as it rose about him, it seeped into his nose, his mouth, his eyes, until he felt he might be drowning in mud, as he’d seen men do at Passchendaele. His legs were pinned by it, his torso too, but he found he could move his hands and arms, so he clawed desperately at his face, trying to scrape the foul stuff off him, coughing and gasping for air as the dirt penetrated his lungs.

“Tommy,” someone pleaded. “Stop it, Tommy.” 

He blinked, and found himself in the warm dark of May’s bedroom. She was straddling him, trying to pull his hands away from his face. She was as strong as she’d said she was. “Stop,” she said again, more quietly, and, though he couldn’t see her face, he could tell she was scared. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

Tommy coughed for what seemed to be a long time. When he could finally stop, he forced himself to breathe out slowly. Then breathe in again. Once. Twice. It hurt, but by the third time he’d convinced himself he was above ground. He pulled May down against his chest, felt her heart beating almost as fast as his.

“How many times?” he asked, though he knew she could have no idea what he was talking about. “How many times can a man dig himself out?”

But she answered anyway. “As many times as it takes, Thomas Shelby,” she said, pressing her lips into his throat. “As many times as it takes.”

**Author's Note:**

> In addition to burning the belongs of the dead, granting forgiveness to the dying, covering mirrors, lighting candles, keeping vigil and giving small keepsakes are all Romani customs around death.


End file.
